Friday, March 29, 2024 -
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Bail reform: a simplistic fallacy contributes to the rise in crime

There are good reasons why Colorado Democrats, like many Democrats across the country, have been pushing for bail reform. A significant portion of the prison population includes people not found guilty of any crime, but unable to post a cash bail. Some of these people are awaiting trial on non-violent felonies; others on misdemeanor charges or even traffic offenses. In other words, were they able to source the funds, they would not be confined.

This was particularly exacerbated during the early phase of the pandemic, when the Constitutional right to a fair and speedy trial was violated. Criminal trials were cancelled and defendants who were unable to post bail sat in prison with no trial date in sight. This was fundamentally wrong, and we are relieved that the justice system is operational again, as this violation of an individual’s Constitutional rights was deeply troubling to us.

The argument for bail reform is that cash bail is a practice that discriminates on the basis of wealth (or lack thereof). Advocates of doing away with bail show evidence that most defendants appear in court on their own recognizance, the promise of returned cash notwithstanding.

If only it were that simple. The core issue is what types of crimes should be detached from cash bail. Reform advocates claim that bail reform would be applied only to “low level” crimes, an ambiguous term if we ever heard one.

The irony is that where bail reform exists, it has highlighted the holes in the criminal justice system — the distortions in allowing bail, or release on personal recognizance, in the first place. If anything, the severity of crimes committed by individuals out on bail is a reminder that bail reform for “low level” crimes is a misnomer.

• Tiffany Harris verbally and physically assaulted Jewish women in New York — but was released on her own recognizance, under bail reform, only to repeat the same behavior.

• Jordan Burnette attacked and vandalized four synagogues in New York, sowing fear in a community. Bail was set, then overturned.

• Closer to home, an 80-year-old man was murdered while feeding the birds outside the Colorado State Capitol. The alleged perpetrator? A man out on personal recognizance, who had been arrested on assault charges — and it wasn’t his first arrest for assault, either.

• Most recently, most horrifically, was the Christmas parade massacre in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Six people were killed and more than 60 injured by a person with a long rap sheet, a long history of arrests for a variety of crimes — assault, battery, obstructing an officer, jumping bail, to name a few — who was out on a paltry $1,000 bail. He took to the wheel of his vehicle and plowed into a crowd celebrating.

While these cases may seem divergent, taken as a collective they emphasize the need to take bail extremely seriously — to understand who a potential repeat offender, what the appropriate bail amount is — and to recognize that “low level” crimes fallaciously include things like domestic abuse, assault and car theft.

If Colorado Democrats pursue bail reform, they must first make crystal clear what “low level” crimes are being precluded from cash bail. But it cannot stop at the crime itself. Judges must have the freedom to assess a defendant as a whole, and make a recommendation for bail or personal recognizance based on the judge’s understanding of the defendant and the judge’s assessment of whether that individual would constitute a threat — even if the crime they have been charged with is “low level.”

With the Denver metro area experiencing a violent crime wave, the city — its lawmakers as well as law enforcement — cannot rest on “feel good” bail reform, propelled by the idea that everyone languishing in prison is there unjustly.

On the face of it, someone who is unable to pay a moving traffic violation or is delinquent on child custody payments should not have to sit in jail awaiting a trial. But that’s not always the case. We need smarter, fairer ways of reducing an overflowing prison population. Simplistic bail reform is not the answer.

The city must become smarter about assessing threat levels posed by individuals. Using a checklist of “low” or “high” level crime isn’t sufficient.

A good first step? Recognizing that domestic abuse — as in the case of the Waukesha suspect — is almost never “low level” and frequently leads to tragic ends, whether within a family unit or, in the case in Wisconsin, the public.

Copyright © 2021 by the Intermountain Jewish News




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